What-if The Se5003 Baroudeur Entered Service?

[Son of Damian]

Airfields are large vulnerable targets and this fact weighted heavily on the minds of NATO for most of the cold war. Billions of dollars would be sunk into projects that would get aircraft around this dilemma; a few like the harrier were successful while most of the others were complete failures.

One of the few successes was the Sud-Est SE5003 Baroudeur; a relatively conventional design from the early 50's, except it had no landing gear and took off from a rocket assisted trolley, landing on two retractable skids and two ventral fins/tail skids. The SE5003 possessed excellent short field performance, able to operate from (un)ploughed fields, sand/gravel beaches, patches of frozen ground, and muddy pastures as short as 750 yards, and could under ideal conditions take off with its skids alone. Mach 1 was attainable in a shallow dive.



The SE5003 had all the makings of a great fighter-bomber but budget problems and politics prevented it from entering production and service.



France wasn't interested in pouring money into indigenous aircraft when there were plenty of foreign aircraft for cheap. But what if the French decided to be French and rebuke the American offer for F-84's? First flying in August 1953 it's probable that the SE5003 could have been in service for Operation Musketeer, and might have seen service in Algeria.

What-if the SE5003 won the NATO Light Weight Strike Fighter contest from the mid 50's, how many NATO members would have bought it?(Only three bought the actual winner)

The SE5003 makes a lot of sense for Germany given its short field performance and Germany's central spot as a cold war battlefield.

Portugal bought the G.91 because of American complaints over the use of aircraft in Africa that were intended for the NATO defense of Europe. It's possible they could have bought the SE5003 instead since its short field performance was drastically better than those of the F-84, F-86, and G.91

Austria, Norway, and Switzerland all evaluated the G.91; maybe the SE5003 would have had better luck thanks to its STOL performance?

[Archibald]

Check your PM    

[Son of Damian]

Maybe later versions would have had conventional landing gear